Work to live or live to work?

A young woman had just lost her job and was living at home with her parents. She was, by all accounts, pretty miserable. Having to start over again, dust off the résumé, redefine herself, refine old skills or learn new ones seemed overwhelming. She felt frustrated, hopeless, and pretty crummy about life. That's when she acted on a friend's suggestion and called a Christian Science practitioner for spiritual guidance.

Christian Science takes a radically different approach to challenges. Instead of seeing this woman from a material standpoint – as an unemployed person who needed God's help – the practitioner reasoned about the situation from God's standpoint. She understood God to be the cause of all being, all action, all life. Spirit is unlimited, all-embracing Love that provides and cares for all creation. Love comforts, inspires, nurtures, directs, and reveals God's good plan. Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, wrote in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," "The starting-point of divine Science is that God, Spirit, is All-in-all, and that there is no other might nor Mind, – that God is Love, and therefore He is divine Principle" (p. 275).

Man, God's creation – including male and female – is the outcome of God. So God's creation isn't a limited, stressed, rejected, unemployed mortal. The male and female of God's creating is spiritual and is the unlabored reflection of Love. Just as the sunbeam's expression of light is a natural outcome of the sun, we are each the natural expression of Love and Love's work. So here's what the practitioner told the young woman: "Man's job is to bless others." She said, "Now, you think about that, and I'll pray for you."